The Zombie Virus (Book 2): The Children of the Damned (33 page)

The creatures sat huddled miserably in large
throngs of tightly clustered bodies in the icy-darkness of the
dank, foul-smelling building. They shivered, burning energy to
create heat for the amassed throng. At the center of the hive, the
pregnant females and newborns sat or lay huddled together while the
swarm instinctively surrounded and protected them. Also in the
center among the females and the young were the alpha males. Not
only were they the fastest and strongest, but they were also those
who had some sort of thought process that had reactivated in their
ravaged minds. It couldn’t quite be called reasoning skills, yet
they learned, and retained those lessons and had some modicum of
control over the rage that coursed through their bodies whenever
some external stimulus induced that response. The rest of the
creatures were followers, whose ravaged minds only allowed the
minimum of survival mechanisms: eat, sleep, procreate, and kill.
They mindlessly followed the alpha males.

The alpha’s turnover was high. Not only were
there challenges to their position from others in the swarm, even
with their slightly elevated intellect, they were still reckless
when the all-consuming madness was upon them. They were sometimes
the first to run headlong into any dangers awaiting them on the
outside, and usually the first to be killed or maimed. Yet some
were changing, garnering even more control of themselves and those
that followed them. Some had learned to lead and then stand back
and let their brethren attack, thus prolonging their own existence.
On some basic level they were learning from each experience as they
became less human and more… something else.

Several days ago, some of these males had
been able to stealthily stalk the squad of men through the
neighborhoods of the town to where they nested. The memory of that
place was seared into the smidgen of operating brain cells that
they had remaining along with the mad lust to destroy the humans
and everything associated with them. Whenever the image of the
fenced compound and the hated creatures that inhabited it
brightened their normally barren thoughts, they would growl
menacingly and grow restless in their insanity.

At some point, the madness would be
irresistible and they would be forced by the rage that sent surges
of adrenaline coursing through their bodies to seek out and destroy
the hated creatures whose very existence tormented their minds like
a ragged splinter caught deep within their soulless bodies. One of
the alpha males lifted its face to the lofty ceiling and voiced a
shrill howl of fury at the dark images of the running men filling
its muddled head. The restlessness grew through the gathered masses
and the babbling increased to a cacophony of insane pandemonium.
After a few minutes, they settled down, the sub-freezing cold air
again dictating their behavior.

Instinct was keeping them huddled in survival
mode, outweighing the madness in their minds. When the weather
warmed, the madness and hunger would again be the controlling
factors and they would emerge into the world to vent their
rage.

Chapter Eleven

Most of the members of the Washington D.C. street
gang lay spread out on the floor and furniture of an old
timber-frame farmhouse’s living room in which an aged cast-iron
stove radiated comforting heat. Most of the crew lay in a hazy,
drug-induced stupor, oblivious to all else around them. Outside,
the snow was falling from the dark night sky with flakes the size
of cotton balls. Lamar sat sprawled on a faux-leather recliner, a
bottle of whisky in one hand and his other caressing the short,
nappy hair of a young girl sitting in a drugged daze on the floor
beside him. He haughtily surveyed the room full of his
underlings.

Ah
be
King
now
!

The thought went through his mind for the
umpteenth time that night. He had sat in this chair as if on high
and had orchestrated all aspects of the evening’s activities. He
took another swig from the bottle feeling the elixir slide down his
esophagus and coat his stomach with its comforting warmth. Their
supplies were running low, especially the food and gas. Three of
their vehicles were running on fumes, including the Escalade. They
were going to have to bust open some tanks to steal gas from the
abandoned cars that dotted the highway if they wanted to make it
any further; maybe find a trailer that they could haul gas cans
with to keep them running. Now this damn weather was turning to
shit on him and he sure as fuck wasn’t going to try driving in it
tomorrow.

That fat hog Roshawna lumbered in from
another room toting one of the pee-wees behind her.

Dat
lizard
butt
bitch
sure
like
‘
em
young
.

The young gangster at least had a sloppy
smile on his face. The fat woman stepped over the Strawberry, one
of the white women who was laid out naked on the floor full of
whatever drugs the crew had forced her to take, and kicked her hard
in the head with one of her elephantine feet as she stepped over
the prone woman.

She
hate
dem
peckerwoods
more
n
me
, he thought.

The abused woman lay on the floor glassy-eyed
and unmoving while the huge woman dragged the boy over her to a
couch and sat him down. The other homies, both men and boys, had
already pulled trains on the three white toss-ups, though only two
were left now. Lamar smirked. The one brown-haired bitch whose brat
Roshawna had killed had thrown herself on a knife that one of the
newjacks had been holding on her. Afterwards that wild man Crazy-8
had taken a turn on her corpse, laughing like a madman from the
drugs and alcohol he had consumed. When he was done, he had
uncaringly tossed her stiffening, naked body off the front porch
into the accumulating snow.

Now the last two white toss-up bitches were
zooted, along with half of the shorties. The drugs they injected
into the two white peckerwoods made them more pliable plus kept
them in line and alive for the crew to have their fun with. They
would keep them for as long as they lasted or until all of the gang
grew bored with them.

Lamar spotted one young pee-wee standing in
the hall, pants hanging half off his ass with his pistol shoved
nearly into his crack and ready to tumble to the ground. He ought
to have Crazy-8 take the newjacks’ pieces so they didn’t do
anything stupid while they were tripping.

The other white woman they had captured lay
trussed up, naked, and unconscious on top of the table in the
kitchen where she had been left after the last train pulled on her.
She was the lucky one of the two. Lamar snickered when he glanced
at the swelling knot growing on the side of the face of the one on
the floor.

Roshawna
gon’
stomp
that
one
inta
the
carpet
fore
this
night
over
.

He took another long pull from the bottle,
feeling like he was sitting in a throne. Maybe the five percenters
were right; maybe they were gods.

He wrinkled his nose as a draft from the
fiercely blowing storm outside brought a musty old smell to
him.

This
crib
smell
like
ol’
white
people
.

Lamar looked around the century old house.
Worn slipcovers adorned most of the sparse furniture in the small
family room and a handful of family photos hung forlornly on the
papered walls. Thankfully the place had the wood stove and plenty
of broken up wood piled against the porch. Although it had taken
them a long time to get the fire lit in the stove, they had finally
figured out how to work it. They hadn’t found much food in the
pantry, barely enough to fill their stomachs for tonight, which he
knew would not keep all these niggas from bitchin’ and fussin’
about every little thing for very long.
Bread
and
circuses
. He had heard that somewhere before. That was how
to keep the people in line, give them bread and circuses. With half
his crew lifted on the copious drugs and alcohol they had brought
along, the two pieces of white meat available to them all, and the
three young hoodrats in the crew who were off bumping uglies with
three of his homies in the adjacent rooms, well, that took care of
the circuses part. With that shitty weather outside, they may be
here for a while so the bread could be getting a little thin.

He had picked out the prettiest of the
hoodrats for himself and she sat on the floor next to his chair,
zonin’ on the cocktail of drugs she had smoked and shot-up. Lamar
finally stood up, swaying drunkenly on his feet. He reached down
and grabbed the young teenaged girl by the arm and jerked her
roughly to her feet, dragging the pretty young black girl behind
him past the enormously obese girl who was guiding the hand of the
pee-wee sitting next to her where she wanted it to go between her
flabby log-like thighs. Lamar and his plaything for the night
stumbled into a bedroom he had proclaimed as his own and he closed
the door.

It was two days before weather allowed them
to leave the farmhouse for the road again, and all of them were
hungry, mean, and agitated.

The group descended off of the Blue Ridge
Mountains into the Shenandoah Valley, plodding through the heavy
snow that was gradually changing into a wet mixture of slushy ice.
As the temperatures climbed to around the freezing point and the
midday sun radiated brightly in the sky, the snow that had fallen
the day before began to melt in rivulets of running water. Their
footwear was soon soaked and their feet numb from the cold that
seeped in with the moisture.

They bypassed the first two exits into
Waynesboro since there were no apparent easily-obtainable resources
that could be scavenged from what they could see at either of those
exits. As they approached the last of the three Waynesboro exits
the urban sprawl from the town became evident on both sides of the
snow-covered highway. Steven realized that the weather was forcing
another short day of travel. They would have to find a place to
hole up, preferably a home with a fireplace or woodstove. Most of
the upper-middle-class homes in the area would have one or both.
They could use the home as a base to scavenge food and supplies
from the various stores in the area.

They walked miserably up an off-ramp past a
large chain hardware store, becoming more alert for any sign of the
Loonies as they entered what was once a bustling hub of humanity.
When they reached the top of the ramp they decided to take the
overpass across the highway to where they had spotted homes not too
far away behind a sprawling storage facility. Kera told the other
women to look for chimneys or stovepipes protruding from the top of
houses to determine which ones they would try to get in to.

After they crossed south over the highway
Dontela bolted from the group and ran over to the northbound lanes.
She stopped in the middle of the slush covered road looking both
ways while the rest of the group paused to watch her.

“Y’all better see this,” she called to
them.

They left Melody holding on to the toboggan’s
rope in which Angela still sat comfortably and ran over to Dontela.
She pointed to the ground around her. The snow and slush had been
recently trampled flat by a multitude of feet. Individual
footprints were clearly visible in spots. Human feet headed in the
same direction they were.

“Loonies,” Kera scowled.

Steven nodded. “And a shitload of them.”

Katherine’s face grew pale as she glanced up
and down the road, thinking that the cold, miserable highway wasn’t
such a bad place after all.

“What do we do now?” Dontela asked, her eyes
alert to her surroundings.

“We continue with our plan,” Steven replied
firmly. “We’ll find a house that we can dry off in, one with a
woodstove instead of a fireplace.”

“Why’s that?”

“A woodstove emits a lot less smoke than a
fireplace. Smoke coming from a chimney is the same as hanging a
flashing neon sign out front saying ‘we are here’.”

Dontela nodded in understanding. “Don’t have
to tell me twice. Let’s go.”

They traipsed back to the other side and
Steven, taking the toboggan rope from Melody, led them toward the
homes that were set back from the road. Katherine explained to
Melody what they had found, and the four that were armed kept a
tight grip on the cold metal of their firearms, wondering what use
they would be if they ran into too big of a group of the savage
creatures.

The first half dozen homes had either
chimneys or nothing emerging from their roofs. Then finally they
spotted a red, brick-sided home sporting an obvious stovepipe on
the back slope of its roof. They approached through the
snow-covered yard and Steven and Kera left the others near the
front porch while they circled the house looking for tracks in the
snow.

“Nothing has been in or out or around the
home since the snow fell,” he told them when they returned.

“Maybe there are M80s inside,” Katherine said
in a fearful whisper.

“If there are, they are probably long dead
from starvation,” Kera reassured her.

They knocked lightly on the windows and doors
and thankfully, the inside of the house remained quiet and
still.

“We’ll go in through the back,” Steven told
them, the sight of the stampede of Loony footprints through the
snow still fresh in his mind.

The rear entryway held a solid, stout wooden
door that took several hard kicks by Steven and Dontela before they
finally forced it open. The snow dampened the banging noise and
kept the sound from carrying too far. Steven and Kera entered the
house first, clearing the main and upper floors before telling the
others it was safe to enter. Katherine was the last in, and as she
shut the door she thought she caught a streak of motion on another
street lined with homes less than a hundred yards away. She slammed
the door shut with a gasp, and winced at the loud noise it made
when it failed to latch and banged back open.